Abstract
The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) conserves and distributes five vegetable collections as seeds: the aubergine* (in this article the word aubergine refers to eggplant), pepper, tomato, melon and lettuce collections, together with their wild or cultivated relatives, are conserved in Avignon, France. Accessions from the collections have geographically diverse origins, are generally well-described and fixed for traits of agronomic or scientific interest and have available passport data. In addition to currently conserving over 10,000 accessions (between 900 and 3000 accessions per crop), the centre maintains scientific collections such as core collections and bi- or multi-parental populations, which have also been genotyped with SNP markers. Each collection has its own merits and highlights, which are discussed in this review: the aubergine collection is a rich source of crop wild relatives of Solanum; the pepper, melon and lettuce collections have been screened for resistance to plant pathogens, including viruses, fungi, oomycetes and insects; and the tomato collection has been at the heart of genome-wide association studies for fruit quality traits and environmental stress tolerance.
Highlights
The evolutionary history of vegetable crops is fascinating because it coincides with the birth and development of agriculture and the world history of human migrations and land discovery
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture) and the Nagoya protocol, adopted in 2010 for fair and equitable sharing of genetic resources [13]. These facts explain the importance of vegetable genebanks as a means of conserving and characterising phytogenetic resources
The vegetable genebank situated in Avignon in the south east of France, the INRAE Centre for Vegetable Germplasm—or Centre de Ressources Biologiques Légumes in French—conserves seeds for five vegetable crops
Summary
The evolutionary history of vegetable crops is fascinating because it coincides with the birth and development of agriculture and the world history of human migrations and land discovery. The accessibility and exchange of genetic resources is increasingly complicated, being regulated by international laws: exchange or collection of live material can no longer occur spontaneously This means that ex-situ conservation is necessary, along with clear documentation (including phytosanitary documents, passport data and material transfer agreements) relating to the stored germplasm, since the ITPGRFA Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture) and the Nagoya protocol, adopted in 2010 for fair and equitable sharing of genetic resources [13] These facts explain the importance of vegetable genebanks as a means of conserving and characterising phytogenetic resources. The vegetable genebank situated in Avignon in the south east of France, the INRAE Centre for Vegetable Germplasm—or Centre de Ressources Biologiques Légumes in French—conserves seeds for five vegetable crops Three of these are from the Solanaceae family: aubergine is a staple food for much of Africa and. We will include the history of the genebank’s constitution, the characteristics of the material present, the methods of conservation, the descriptors used, current databases and a spotlight on how the material has been used in different research programmes
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